October this year has delivered a new challenge to the Greene household - whether or not to celebrate Halloween. When we first got married - this wasn't an issue. No-one we knew celebrated Halloween - it wasn't an Australian tradition.

Gradually though it has become more popular and we're being invited to Halloween parties and there are now young children living in our street so trick or treating is a real possibility this year. We don't have children, and we've thought long and hard and decided that we're not planning to participate. It's nothing to do with the history of halloween or the traditions like dressing up - we've got three sticking points with the way its celebrated.

The first is the "lollies from strangers". The local pharmacy has mostly phased out its jelly bean jar because its not ok for strangers to give children lollies. Or worse still, for children to associate the products coming out of pharmacies with lollies, and help themselves.

Secondly, with Australia in the midst of an obesity epidemic, should we be encouraging our children to eat a lot of lollies? True, they walked to get them, but I doubt they burned off enough calories to cancel out all that sugar.

Lastly, and the clincher for me, was the fact the major retailers have jumped on board the halloween bandwagon and are pushing for sales of carving pumpkins, lollies and other halloween foods (orange iced donuts) we wouldn't ordinarily buy. Perhaps we would if it was a deep-seated tradition in our family, but it isn't. It smacks of commercialism. Even the local florist was putting together halloween arrangements in orange and black when I dropped by today.

Once a food is "branded" for a celebration (e.g. Christmas lollies, Easter bunny shaped marshmallows) its no longer welcome in our house because its about retailing and profit, not about nutrition. It's my tiny protest in the face of the major retaillers. If even a portion of the profits from each sale went to a homeless shelter or animal welfare association, perhaps I would change my mind. Instead, tomorrow night we're planning a closed gate, and if we do still get trick-or-treaters they'll be offered a piece of fruit. But only after I've introduced myself to their parents. That's the best plan I can come up with for Halloween this year.

So what's happening at your place? Does your family celebrate Halloween?

I am thrilled to announce that my recently completed novella “Home for Christmas” has been accepted for publication by Escape Publishing. “Home for Christmas” (HfC) started life as a 2013 Little Gems entry and while it scored well it didn’t make the anthology. One of the judges gave very specific feedback on how to improve the manuscript and in April 2013 - HfC v2 was born – a 6500 word short story, which I subbed to Escape Publishing. It wasn’t accepted for publication in April, but again I received great feedback and an invitation to resubmit if those issues were addressed. I used the RWA June 50K in 30Days event to work it through and the manuscript grew to 22000 words - HfC v3. I started the critiquing process and received mixed opinion – I listened to the feedback and rewrote huge chunks to address everyone’s concerns, all the while working towards a goal of re-submitting the manuscript before leaving for the Riding the Waves conference in August. HfC v4 ended up just over 31000 words, and I subbed the first three chapters six hours before I left for the airport. The printed copy I proof-read during the flight was still warm from the printer when I boarded. After conference, we took a few days to visit Rottnest Island and while working through another proof on the verandah overlooking the beach, I received a request for the full manuscript. Fast forward to October and while visiting Tiaro (a town I will remember forever now) I checked my phone and saw that Home for Christmas had been accepted for publication. Hubby and I ditched Tiaro, headed for the beach and celebrated with impromptu fish and chips by the water. It's a day I will remember forever.

One of my ongoing projects each year is to focus on enhancing my creativity outside writing. I'm not naturally a visual person - I don't watch a lot of TV or movies and I never studied art as a student so I'm coming back to visual images later in life.

Of course, whenever I want to learn a new skill, I look for a book - I love to read. The local library yielded a book on getting the most out of your photos using an iPhone and I devoured it, but wasn't able to practice everything before I had to take it back.

Here is one of this month's photos taken just before sunset while waiting for the moon to break free of the cloud.

We've had a bit of bad weather just recently. Not raining - just incredibly windy. To the point that our young dog wouldn't sleep at night because of the howling of the wind. Cue a couple of nights watching repeats on television while being cuddled by a 40kg sook.

Of course that brings some unexpected viewing highlights - including stumbling across an episode of the 1970's show CHiPs, complete with guest star Leif Garrett. Now it might be showing my age, but the boys from CHiPs and Leif were childhood heartthrobs - along with Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson from The Hardy Boys TV show. So it wasn't such a hardship to keep my bleary eyes open.

The front passed through yesterday at about lunch time and hey presto - Misty decided the house was safe again and we had a full nights sleep. Happy days for the Greene household.

November is national novel writing month - NaNoWriMo - one of my favourite months of the year. As a slow, edit-as-you-go writer, I knew I would struggle with the fast and furious pace of NaNoWriMo, but once I gave myself permission not to edit, the words flowed.

I'm in my pre-NaNo phase - where I try to soak in as many experiences as I can that will help with my writing. Yesterday was a history day - a library talk about historic Baddow House in Maryborough and one of my favourite creativity exercises - my usual distance walk, but on roads I've never been on before. The walk was great. Tucked away in suburbia was a 1950's treasure trove - original house, 1950's house and caravan, on a couple of acre block with the original fence still standing (above). Sadly it was surrounded by units and townhouses and I could imagine the distress of the elderly couple who lived there as the property developers circled.

If you're thinking of trying NaNoWriMo, Alexandra Sokoloff dedicates October to NaNoWriMo preparation. Working through the blog posts and exercises will make your November that much easier.

I'm a great believer in creativity exercises to free your mind up and get you writing. When faced with something out of my comfort zone, I always think "I can't do that", but when I put my mind to it, yes I can.

I would like to introduce you to my critique group member and friend EE Montgomery ( www.eemontgomery.com ). EE sits on my left (as we go around the table), writes M/M romance, bakes sensational scones and makes very wicked cherry jelly and other preserves at Christmas time. I digress, what does this have to do with creativity?

A few years ago our group of six did a creativity exercise loosely titled "Death of a Decade". We dressed as the decade (I was a 70's hippy, EE was in a fox stole from the 20's) and walked Toowong cemetery until we found an interesting grave from our decade. We then wrote the story of that grave. The original aim was to self-publish the works in an anthology with our fellow group members.

EE wrote her story "Between Love and Honour" - a M/M romance with a sad ending (it was based on a grave), and it was picked up by Dreamspinner Press. Fast forward to this year, and EE's sequel "The Courage to Love" has just been released in paperback. Her first paper release (pictured above)! The same month, her short "In Another Life" has been published by Escape Publishing. She is on fire. If this is your type of romance, you should check her out.

And what of my story, you ask? It's dark, definitely not a romance, with the death of a child, prison, shattered family relationships and a man who discovers a love of woodwork that carries him through the mess his life becomes. I'm planning on re-editing it, then sending it out into the big wild world. As a creativity exercise, the cemetery trip definitely worked. I would never have even considered writing this without our "Death of A Decade" trip.

How do you explore your creativity?

Fiona Greene Author

"A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step." Join me as I travel the road to publication and beyond.